{"id":39724,"date":"2023-12-02T14:15:36","date_gmt":"2023-12-02T19:15:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/?p=39724"},"modified":"2023-12-02T14:15:42","modified_gmt":"2023-12-02T19:15:42","slug":"congress-expels-george-santos-heres-how-florida-lawmakers-voted","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/2023\/12\/02\/congress-expels-george-santos-heres-how-florida-lawmakers-voted\/","title":{"rendered":"Congress expels George Santos. Here\u2019s how Florida lawmakers voted."},"content":{"rendered":"
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Florida\u2019s 28 U.S. House members were split evenly on the matter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In just the sixth expulsion of a member in the chamber\u2019s history, the U.S House voted to remove first-term Republican U.S. Rep. George Santos of New York from its ranks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The vote to expel was 311-114. That included an equal number of Florida lawmakers who voted for and against the measure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fourteen legislators from the Sunshine State, including all eight Democrats and six of their GOP colleagues, decided there was enough reason to eject Santos.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another 14 lawmakers, all of them Republican, voted against the move.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Those voting \u201cyes\u201d included Republican U.S. Reps.\u00a0Mario D\u00edaz-Balart,\u00a0Neil Dunn,\u00a0Scott Franklin,\u00a0Carlos Gim\u00e9nez,\u00a0John Rutherford,\u00a0and\u00a0Daniel Webster, as well as Democratic U.S. Reps.\u00a0Kathy Castor,\u00a0Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick,\u00a0Lois Frankel,\u00a0Maxwell Frost,\u00a0Jared Moskowitz,\u00a0Darren Soto,\u00a0Debbie Wasserman Schultz\u00a0and\u00a0Frederica Wilson.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Those voting \u201cno\u201d included Republican U.S. Reps. Aaron Bean, Gus Bilirakis, Vern Buchanan, Kat Cammack, Byron Donalds, Matt Gaetz, Laurel Lee, Anna Paulina Luna, Brian Mast, Cory Mills, Bill Posey, Mar\u00eda Elvira Salazar, Greg Steube and Michael Waltz.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Santos\u2019 expulsion came in the wake of a blistering House Ethics Committee report<\/a> that accused Santos of breaking federal law.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The report, a product of eight months of investigations and witness interviews, led the panel to conclude Santos had knowingly caused his campaign committee to file false or incomplete reports with the Federal Election Commission, used campaign funds for personal purposes and violated the Ethics in Government Act with his financial disclosure statements.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Separately, the U.S. Attorney\u2019s Office for the Eastern District of New York indicted Santos, accusing him of duping donors, stealing from his campaign and lying to Congress. Prosecutors allege Santos, who has pleaded not guilty<\/a>, fraudulently wired money from his campaign to his personal bank account and used other misappropriated funds to pad his campaign coffers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The expulsion push is just the latest chapter in what has been a spectacular fall from grace for Santos, a first-term lawmaker initially celebrated as an up-and-comer after he flipped a district from Democrats last year and helped Republicans win control of the House.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Santos\u2019 troubles began soon after his election as reports emerged<\/a> that he lied about having Jewish ancestry, a career at top Wall Street firms and a college degree. His presence in the House quickly became a distraction<\/a> and an embarrassment to his party.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gim\u00e9nez, who served as Mayor of Miami-Dade County before winning his U.S. House seat in 2020, told CNN<\/a> Friday that he found the evidence Santos stole money from his contributors to be \u201cpretty overwhelming.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cTo me, that\u2019s one of the cardinal sins of public service,\u201d he said. \u201cYou don\u2019t deserve to be a public servant if you\u2019re stealing money from your constituents.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Donalds, who also earned his seat in 2020 after four years in the Florida Legislature, decried the decision as circumventing due process.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not the actions of George Santos. It\u2019s the fact that everybody is afforded their day in court, and that was denied to him,\u201d he told CNN. \u201cIf that\u2019s going to be the standard in America going forward, I shudder for the future of our country.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Florida\u2019s 28 U.S. House members were split evenly on the matter. In just the sixth expulsion of a member in the chamber\u2019s history, the U.S House voted to remove first-term… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":39725,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"wpai_generated_summary":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"{title}\n\n{excerpt}\n\n{url}","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"dois","default_image_id":71799,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false},"categories":[15],"tags":[6931],"class_list":["post-39724","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics","tag-congress-expels-george-santos-heres-how-florida-lawmakers-voted"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39724","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39724"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39724\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":39726,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39724\/revisions\/39726"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/39725"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39724"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39724"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39724"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}